It’s Not a Matter of If But When: Reflections on Disaster Recovery and the BP Oil Spill

Here’s a post penned by TOA’s CTO and my co-founder and partner, Irad Carmi:

The BP crude oil spill is turning into one of the worst environmental disasters in history and it is becoming clear that the mighty BP had no DR plans in place to deal with what is by any measure a likely scenario!

The R&D effort poured into the offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is said to eclipse the NASA research efforts. Yet – in their rush to reach the black gold 10,000 feet below sea level – no one stopped to ask the question “what are we really going to do if something goes wrong?”

At TOA we ask that question every day.

It is completely clear to us that we can only offer a mission critical enterprise solution from the Cloud if reliability is 100%.

We achieve that goal by employing best of breed technology and implementing proven processes and enormous discipline.  Our Service Assurance team conducts regular Disaster Recovery exercises and is up-to-date on all the latest thinking on this subject and they get measured on their ability to provide uninterrupted service.  Many of our clients discovered that our Cloud-based service can be more reliable than any of their installed solutions.

Let’s hope that the BP oil spill serves as a loud wake up call for the world to take DR seriously when it comes to protecting not only the business but our fragile environment. We know those two are, at this point, interconnected.